Mainstream Graphics: FX5700U vs Radeon 9600XT

Synthetic Benchmarks

Aquamark 3

Aquamark 3 has become one of the popular alternatives to 3DMark. This benchmark uses the Krass Engine which is used to power Massive Development's Aquanox 2 game. The benchmark uses many DirectX 9 features and therefore is a good measurement of DX9 capabilities and comparing it to other similarly configured systems.

Benchmark Configuration

Resolution

1024x768

AA

None

AF

4x

NVIDIA FX5700 Ultra

Asus Radeon 9600XT

Score

29173

30856

Average FPS

29.1735

30.8563

Min FPS

8.4746

7.4212

Max FPS

91

109

Looking at the results of this benchmark, it's hard to say which one is faster. Both cards have about the same overall score and average frame rate. Sure the Asus Radeon 9600XT looks like it's faster, but it's such a marginal difference that it's not really significant.

However, as we saw in our review of the Asus Radeon 9800XT, both the FX5950 Ultra and the Radeon 9800XT performed nearly identically in this test, but the Radeon 9800XT proved to be the better DirectX performer overall. Let's see if the same story unfolds for the FX5700 Ultra and the Radeon 9600XT.

Futuremark 3DMark 03 v340 and 3DMark 2001SE

Even though the relevance of this benchmark is debatable now that we are seeing a lot more DirectX 9 games being released, it remains a good method of comparing results between systems. 3DMark 03 uses a combination of DirectX 7, DirectX 8, and a small sampling of DirectX 9. Therefore it is a good indication on how it would perform in some older games of games that have a small quantity of DirectX 9 features.

NVIDIA FX5700 Ultra

Asus Radeon 9600XT

3DMark Score

3799

3759

GT1 - Wings of Fury (FPS)

152.49

134.45

GT2 - Battle of Proxycon (FPS)

24.18

23.29

GT3 - Troll's Lair (FPS)

20.34

21.39

GT4 - Mother Nature (FPS)

21.57

23.53

Fill Rate (Single-Texturing, MTexels/s)

1156.70

906.47

Fill Rate (Multi-Texturing, MTexels/s)

1523.53

1821.46

Vertex Shader (FPS)

17.07

12.95

Pixel Shader 2.0

27.01

32.13

Ragtroll (FPS)

14.22

14.91

Like in Aquamark 3, there is little difference between the results in this test. Both the Asus Radeon 9600XT and the NVIDIA FX5700 Ultra perform roughly the same with each card taking and losing different tests. If looking at these two cards based on the tests so far, we'd have to say they're about equal. But of course we don't stop here. ;)

Just for reference, here are the 3DMark 2001 SE scores.

NVIDIA FX5700 Ultra

Asus Radeon 9600XT

3DMark Score

14114

12902

GT1 - Car Chase (Low)

230.1

163.9

GT1 - Car Chase (High)

78.6

75.3

GT2 - Dragolithic (Low)

230.6

212.5

GT2 - Dragolithic (High)

128.9

124.9

GT3 - Lobby (Low)

201.4

191.3

GT3 - Lobby (High)

93.7

92.4

GT4 - Nature

73.5

68.6

SPEC ViewPerf 7.1

SPEC ViewPerf uses industry standard applications (like 3DS Max and Pro/Engineer) to create a benchmark that measures real-world professional performance. This benchmark is purely OpenGL based and gives a good sense of how graphics hardware performs in rendering applications. For gamers, this benchmark would give you an idea of raw OpenGL performance, but is a poor reflection of actual game play.

NVIDIA FX5700 Ultra

Asus Radeon 9600XT

3DS Max

13.96

10.68

Design Review

48.08

37.49

Data Explorer

58.71

65.85

Lightwave

14.56

13.08

Pro/Engineer

12.76

12.87

Unigraphics

8.422

23.59

Here we see some really mixed results. If you are to take anything from these results is that each card is better suited to particular professional applications. However, both cards seem to perform equally well in Lightwave and Pro/Engineer.

Unreal Tournament 2003

Even though Unreal Tournament 2003 is a honest-to-god game, the benchmark feature that many reviews use is synthetic because it is not what a user experiences in a real game. However, this doesn't mean it still isn't relevant. The benchmark does show us how well hardware perform with the game's engine and gives you a rough idea of what you can expect in an online match (I mentally subtract 10 FPS from the results to give me a better rough estimate of real game performance with real players).

Benchmark Configuration

Skin and Texture Details

Ultra High

Effects (i.e. coronas, decals)

All enabled

Anisotropic Filtering

Specified through LevelOfAnisotropy variable

The Asus Radeon 9600XT performs a bit better than the NVIDIA FX5700 Ultra. At each setting, the Asus beats the FX5700 Ultra by at least 10 FPS, which isn't a very significant difference when frame rates are in excess of 80FPS (you'd hardly notice it). The Radeon 9600XT will have no problems playing this game with all the details enabled with even 4x anti-aliasing and 8x aniso. The FX5700 Ultra plays UT well except at 4x8, where in an online game you may experience FPS below the playable 60 FPS mark.

Here we see some interesting results. It would appear that the FX5700 Ultra performs better without any anisotropic filtering, whereas the Asus Radeon 9600XT performs slightly better with it on. However, this does not mean much since neither card can play UT2K3 properly above 0x0. So looking at the only playable setting (0xAA, 0xAF) we see that the FX5700 Ultra is only slightly better by 3 FPS. I would suspect both cards are able to play with 2xAA if you take down the details a bit.